The Divorcing Person’s New Year’s Reflection
Moving into the new year when you are going through or still recovering from divorce is tricky. For everyone around you, the new year is a time for new beginnings and attempts at self-improvement. Of course, those of us getting divorced feel like we are carrying the same problems generated by the same people into the same long days and nights. Yes, it’s a new year, but it’s the same old heavy weight coming with us. We are exhausted.
I remember people asking me about my New Year’s resolutions when I was going through divorce, and I thought, what a luxury for you to have the energy to improve yourself.
My resolution one year in divorce was just this: SURVIVE.
I’m cautious with all of you this time of year, because you’ve already been a bit beaten emotionally by all of the happy family propaganda of the holidays. You’ve endured awkward or lonely celebration days. You’ve answered questions about your divorce and life to well-meaning but intrusive extended family members. Mostly you’re exhausted by the dread of the holidays that you’ve been courting all month long.
You don’t need a resolution, you just need a reflection. So here’s my pared down, super sensitive, easy New Year’s Reflection for you. I only want you to do one thing.
I just want you to notice how you’ve grown this past year.
That’s it.
I don’t need you to start or stop anything. I just want you to pause and realize how you’ve grown.
Science shows us that our brains will always return to thinking about how far we have yet to travel. We see very clearly how distant we are from our goal of emotional relief. We see how we still get so affected by our former partner. We feel like a failure because we are still in it when we most want to be over it.
So how do we chart our growth? Here are a few prompts to get you started:
1. Your Teacher. What book, blog, article, or thinker this past year helped you to rethink how you are handling yourself or your divorce? What did you learn?
2. Your Growth. In the past year, how did you grow relative to your divorce? Maybe you found your voice, learned how to better handle a high conflict person, got support, created better home transition routines, talked better to yourself, or noticed patterns that you want to continue to dissolve. Some of my clients have tackled complicated financial disclosures, faced unbearably dark emotions, initiated hard communications, and started working on new and truer ways of talking to themselves. What movement have you made in the last 12 months?
3. Your Parenting. If you’re a parent, what are you proud of that your children witnessed in you this past year?
4. Your Success. What’s one problem you actually did solve related to your divorce in the past year? We think of divorce as one big, long problem. Break it down into smaller elements and think about the pieces to which you brought some small measure of resolution this year.
5. Your Awareness of What is Next. Awareness is the start of any growth in you. What uncomfortable or unwanted pattern or go-to reaction did you notice in yourself this year? You don’t need to have conquered it, just mark that your new awareness of it means that growth is on its way.
You are getting somewhere. Yes, it’s taking longer than you want, but it is vital that you celebrate your progress. Doing so keeps your confidence in your growth trajectory alive and reminds you that you are, in fact, getting somewhere.
This new year, drop the resolutions. Bringing a reflective heart into January 1st will serve you far better and set you up for continued growth into 2023.
